I'm stuck! Ever felt stuck?
I've been stuck in my Eating Disorder and I've been stuck in my recovery. In the past, I resisted it, hate it, yell and scream about it to others as well as yell and scream AT it or I can even push through it, avoid it, distract myself from it or get obsessed about it. I can even accept it. And, believe me I have done all of these things. Only to end up feeling stickier. I just feel like Braer Rabbit! But I'm realizing that it's less important to me to try and unstick myself as it is how I sit WITH the stickiness. In other words, I am finding that what feels better is to merely allow myself to be sticky. I don't think this is the same as accepting it. Rather, it is an opening up of myself to the experience of "sticky". I learned this concept from a very basic yet profound activity when I was in treatment. I learned to "taste" my food again after many years of denying myself of this pleasure. I would take the time to look, smell and then taste each bite as if each was a unique experience that would never occur again. Later in my recovery, I broadened this lesson by having meals with my therapist and engaging in food challenges with my friends who were also in recovery from an Eating Disorder. Over and over, I would experience this "stickiness." I remember it being challenging and I often HATED it, I fought it. But, in time, I learned to enjoy the experience of being "sticky" with food.
I no longer experience this sense of stickiness when interacting with food, but believe me, I experience it in life over and over again. I often feel I can't move forward. I have the desire, I have the yearning but I am STUCK. Stuck by and within a place in life, by circumstances, and by situations that are mostly outside my control. And, again, the concept of merely accepting it sounds too simple and almost dismissive. Instead, I imagine myself sitting beside the stickiness as if it is within me at all but a state of being. Almost as if it is an alien I do not know anything about. Because, in reality, it may not be me at all. I have to ask myself "Who am I to be so VAIN!" So, instead, I try to be-friend this stickiness. I try to be gentle with it and listen to it, be curious about it. Or if that's too difficult, I merely just sit with it. I am patient with it and I am patient with myself as I am being patient with it! And, amazingly enough, I often find that it is not as uncomfortable as I thought it was. It is not as threatening. It is not as awful.
Throughout my recovery and throughout my life, I am learning that I have little control over most things, including (ironically enough) how quickly I recover. But, though I have little control, I do have much impact. My impact comes from how I care for myself and how I care for life in general. I am learning that when I feel stuck it is because I WANT more. And that is good....to a degree. But, as my mother so frequently reminded me as I was growing up, I do not ALWAYS get what I want. However, I want it none the less and I get angry that I can 't have it. Then I begin to resent IT or I resent the world or the universe or God or whatever is in front of me at the moment. When this happens, I soon feel helpless to change and then I get STUCK. But, I can, on the other hand, choose to be open and willing. I can invite this stickiness to stick with me just as I can reassure the stickiness that I will stick with it.
So, in my last thought for this blog....Maybe this stickiness isn't so bad. After all, isn't there such a thing as "sticky sweet."
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